How will you handle this situation ??
You child is taught is sunday school or in a religious text that " God created earth and everything in it".
From school the child learns that earth was formed by " big bang" and that earth is 12.5 billion years, and dinosours lived on earth and so on…
When you child aks you which is true, how will you answer , assuming you are not a religious bigot .
I’d say, “I don’t see any reason they can’t both be right. Maybe God sparked the Big Bang and that’s how the universe got here. I really don’t know for sure, though, I’m not THAT old! 
What do you think might have happened? How can we find out more?”
Sorry, I cannot answer this question, as I am a religious bigot.
If I weren’t, I suppose I would say "Not all Christians believe that the Creation account in Genesis is literally true. In our part of the Church, for instance, we mainly believe that the story is just that - a story - and that we should believe that the truth in it is what it tells us about the nature of God and his purpose in creating the world by whatever means he did. That said, I think I would be amused rather than surprised if God some day showed me that it really did happen exactly like that. 
"
Yeah - I don’t see a conflict between science and Bible-as-metaphor.
There was this terrific Far Side years ago with two scientists standing in front of a chalkboard covered with formulae. In the center was a big =? and the caption read “Then a miracle occurred.”
Interpretation (of all kinds of documents) is an interesting lesson all on its own, once you’re ready to discuss war.
I’m agnostic now but grew up Catholic and my parents still are.
They went with the angle that while there was a big bang 12.5 million years ago and dinosaurs roamed the earth it was god that was doing so.
They said the “8 days” was not meant to be taken literally and 8 days could actually mean millions of years.
Their explanation was that Genesis was an oversimplified story of creation but the bigger point to remember was that god was responsible for the creation of man.
WhyNot,
I do not think, it will answer their query, you are sort of evading the issue !
or
are you saying that , keep it vague and let them figure out , when they grow up !
would like to hear from parents who had to face this situation !!
For what it’s worth, I remember being taught that the creation story in Genesis was to be taken metaphorically—that the six days were not literal, twenty-four-hour days, when I was old enough to know that the dinosaurs died out before human beings arrived on the scene and stuff like that.
Yes both. And neither! I don’t think it’s vague at all. I, personally, believe in the Divine *and *the Big Bang, as do a great many scientists I know. I think God/dess works *through *evolution, not instead of it.
In this area, I’m more interested in what my kids think than indoctrinating them with what I think. While I am religious, I’m not of a religion that thinks we have any exclusive Truth or that we’re the only Right or Righteous people. As a result, I don’t have to “save” them. I’m willing to discuss my ideas with them (for example, that there is a Divine Force that works through natural laws), but I’m not willing to tell them that I’m absolutely certain I’m right. I don’t *know *if I’m right. What I say and believe works for me, but it may not work for them. I’m willing to help them sort out what they believe, to do more research if they don’t know enough to formulate beliefs, and to support them in whatever path they choose - religious or not, conservative or not.
My son is 15, and started asking these sorts of questions when he was about 5. Sometimes he wanted the scientific answers and sometimes the religious ones. Sometimes he wanted to hear, “Squirrels have bushy tails as a sign of good nutrition. A female squirrel will see a nice full tail and think that would be a good daddy for her babies because he knows where lots of food is.” Sometimes he wanted to hear, “Squirrels have big bushy tails because God thought they needed something to separate them from the rats!” I’m happy to provide both, and I follow his lead as to which one to emphasize based on his state of mind at the time. Now that he’s older, he has some really interesting thoughts to share with me on the nature of souls and God, although he’s not active in my religious group right now.
My daughter is 3, and hasn’t started asking yet. She likes to help light candles with me to pray for sick babies, and she knows “the Goddess Brigid” helped her grow big and strong when she was born prematurely. She helped make candles at Candlemas and will color eggs this weekend for Spring Equinox. Right now, she’s all about the external trappings and hasn’t begun to question the underlying theology.
Nobody truly knows what “God” means.
Now, if you believe you’ve answered the question of God, once and for all, then your answer sets the stage for all other queries.
But IMHO every description of God leaves gaping holes.
My parents don’t believe in religious education, but they both grew up Catholic and carry a belief in God around like a casual purse. Whenever I’d ask about it, they’d reply with something like, “Well, some Christians believe blah blah blah. Your father and I believe blah blah blah.” It was always conveyed as an unspoken assumption that I was to make up my own mind about what was fact and what was fiction and, since my parents have a personal set of beliefs that differ from the church, personalizing religion was the standard as opposed to the blasphemous.
I was lucky in this regard, even though I turned out an athiest anyway
I’ve been known to write that over the arrow of chemical reactions on organic chemistry exams. Mostly while drawing mechanisms.
And I completely agree that faith and science can coexist peacefully. In fact, the more I learn of the scientific explanations of the world around me, the more I marvel at the divine that I believe is behind it. And I intend to pass all of this along to my children.
Humans and monkeys had a common ancestor, in “science class” !
and
Humans were created by God , in "sunday school " !
How will you explain evolution to your child ??
I am looking for a good explantion for the same to a **10 year old ** …
What’s wrong with:
“Humans and monkeys had a common ancestor” in science class
and
“God created humans AND monkeys AND their common ancestor” in sunday school
"Perhaps God created everything by starting the Big Bang. That made the light, and the air and water and earth, just like the bible and other creation stories say. Over time, life started from that, just a few cells at first, and then more and more complicated plants and animals. The creatures that were best able to survive or had some mutation that made them fit better in their environment had more babies with those mutations. When the mutations get weird enough that those mutants can’t have babies with the creatures they mutated from, we consider that a separate species. Over many, many, many years, we got where we are today - some of those creatures all died out and left fossils behind that we study, and some are alive today. And things are still changing today!
"Some people think God is controlling our evolution to make us into something He wants - maybe God has something special for us to do and we had to evolve into humans to do it. Some people think that evolution is totally random and not being controlled at all - that God just started everything off and is now watching to see what happens, like when you do an experiment in science class.
“What do you think might be going on?”
I would say “Well, nobody really knows for sure. You can either accept the answer ‘I don’t know’, or you can try to draw your own conclusion based on your own experience. It is however, important that you question the so called ‘facts’ that some people present to you, and seek the true facts for yourself.”
I went to Sunday School every sunday for 10 years (ages 3 to 13), and went to public school every school day for 13 years (ages 5 to 18) and not only did I never pose this question to my parents, it never even occurred to me that it was a question or a conflict until 10 years later when the Creationists brought it up.
As kids we were more concerned with “Does God love me?” “Did Jesus die for my sins?” “Do you love me?” and that was good enough for us I guess.
The whole “question” of evolution was solved in my little brain by Hampshire’s answer.
I would explain that God created man, apes, and monkeys from a common ancestor, by using evolution. If he asked how things which look very different can come from the same source, I’d point to a ball of yarn and explain that by using one mechanism, knitting, in my case, I can make that yarn into things like a sweater, a sock, a teddy bear, or a toy for the cat to play with. If he needed more of an explanation, I’d tell him that the theory that human beings evolved from other creatures doesn’t make us less special or mean God didn’t create us. If anything, it makes it even more special because instead of just snapping His (metaphorical) fingers, God set in motion a process which took time and energy to create us. It’s a bit like the difference between a store-bought sweater and a hand=made one.
By the way, indian, I remember a time when I was about 10 years old and learning about science. I distinctly remember looking up at the sky and thinking, “OK, so yellow and blue make green. Who decided it should be that way? Why do they make green instead of pink or purple, or some color I’ve never heard of?” As a child, I had difficulty reconciling God and science; as an adult I still don’t. Like Solfy and others in this thread, the more I learn of science, the more my awe and wonder at the way God works is increased.
I am, by the way, a devout Christian, however it wasn’t until I was a grown woman that I heard that one couldn’t accept evolutionary theory and be a Christian. I may believe innumerable silly things, if you ask the athests around here, but that’s one silly thing I refuse to believe.
I attended private Christian schools my whole life. We were taught evolution in science class and used regular science textbooks. We were told that God reveals himself through his creation as well as the Bible. We were never told that the Bible was meant to be a science textbook. We have scientists for that! I was always taught the Bible stories and science both from an early age and never was confused about it. A 10 year old is certainly capable of understanding the roles of science and religion. Most Christians I know don’t have any trouble resolving sciences’ findings with their religious beliefs. God can set up a system any way he wants - if he thought people evolving from apes was the way to go, then ok.
I do know some Christians who do believe in the literal 7 day creation. When their children are told about evolution, they tell their kids flat out it is not true, that science is just wrong in that regard. Reasons I have heard include the devil puts false “proof” of evolution in the earth, that God is testing our faith, that scientists are all evil liars, all kinds of things. People who have these kinds of religious beliefs are much more likely to send their kids to a fundamental private school that matches their teaching, or home school, in my experience. So they kind of avoid the whole thing altogether.
Not all religions that teach about the Bible in Sunday school approach it from the viewpoint of “everything in the Bible is literally true”. Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Modern Orthodox Judaism, Catholicism, Unitarian Universalism, and many mainline Protestant denominations are examples of ones that would teach about the Bible but not that the Bible is to be taken literally.
I’d be inclined to explain the idea of a metaphor in this case (though I think a 10-year-old should know about metaphors already if they’re in a decent language arts class). I’d also say that I think that people who fixate on “is this literally and historically true” when thinking about the Bible are rather missing the point. The Bible isn’t a history or science book. It’s a book about some people’s attempts to understand the divine, and the point is to think about the stories and other stuff in there and develop your own idea of the divine using it.
A 10 year old, particularly a bright 10 year old, can understand more stuff than you might think, and I think it’s better for them to have to stretch a bit to understand something like this than it is for you as a parent to try to dumb down the explanation. Religion is all too often presented in a “we know all the answers” style, which turns a lot of people off (and is inconsistent with some religious traditions, like the Jewish tradition of study and commentary).